Gillian Keegan has apologised after being caught swearing on camera while expressing frustration about the crumbling concrete crisis in schools, claiming that “everyone else has sat on their arse” while she tried to fix the problem.
In a seemingly unguarded moment after a TV interview, the education secretary was filmed lamenting that nobody had praised her for doing a “fucking good job”.
After a series of challenging questions from the ITV News reporter Daniel Hewitt, Keegan said exasperatedly: “Does anyone ever say: ‘You know what, you’ve done a fucking good job, because everyone else has sat on their arse and done nothing?’ No signs of that, no?”
It was not clear whether Keegan was referring to her cabinet contemporaries, her predecessors or Hewitt.
In a follow-up interview hours later, Keegan told broadcasters it had been an “off-the-cuff remark after the news interview had finished”. She added: “I would like to apologise for my choice of language. That was unnecessary.”
Downing Street censured her for the outburst, with Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson saying it was “not acceptable” and that it was right she had later apologised. They refused to say whether the prime minister had ordered Keegan to say sorry, but stressed he continued to have full confidence in her.
In her second interview, Keegan said her “sat on their arses” comment had been aimed at “nobody in particular”.
She took aim at her interviewer, who she claimed was “making out it was all my fault, and that’s what I was saying: do you ever go into these interviews where anyone ever says anything but ‘you’ve just done a terrible job’?”.
It has emerged that she was on holiday in Spain for six days at the end of August. She is said to have been in touch with officials, chaired daily meetings and been back in the department when new guidance about Raac was issued to schools on 31 August.
Sources close to Keegan did not dispute that she had wanted to travel home earlier but had been unable to due to widespread airport chaos.
Keegan’s handling of the crisis and TV gaffe were criticised by opposition parties. Keir Starmer said the whole situation was “descending into farce” and that the government had “failed to prepare” properly.
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While Keegan previously won praise for funding a deal with teachers over pay, ending months of strikes, reviews of her response to the current crisis have been more mixed. Some Tories believe she has come across as complacent by stressing repeatedly that only a small proportion of school buildings are at risk of collapse.
She was criticised last month for suggesting employers would not ask pupils about their A-levels in a decade’s time, on the day students received their results. It came amid a sharp fall in As and A*s, with critics accusing her of “adding insult to injury” on what was a heartbreaking day for many.
One former government adviser said of Keegan: “She has one of those very big personalities which can work well in some contexts but is a style that can be a problem when it collides with reality.”
Keegan has been education secretary since October and is the sixth person to hold the position since the 2019 election.